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Overview

The front cover for Benji Hughes' Merge debut features an oil painting-rendered photo of the hirsute, North Carolina-based pop purveyor sporting aviator sunglasses and vampire teeth. However, what lies inside is not the swampy, True Blood-inspired cacophony of sultry, Southern gothic twang that Songs in the Key of Animals' misanthropic cover art would suggest, but a breezy amalgamation of girl-crazed blue-eyed soul and Chateau Marmont bungalow pop that falls somewhere between Beck, OutKast, and Harry Nilsson. "People are Animals," says Hughes in the album's press release, and he takes that notion quite literally on the two-disc, 11-track LP, applying his well-honed production skills and goofy sense of humor (this is the man who helped write the brilliant "Let's Duet" from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) to a set of left-field pop confections with titles like "Shark Attack!!!!!!!!!!," "Zebra," and "Peacockin' Party."

Give these guys some credit for sticking with the program. For one, they're from Seattle
-- okay, Tacoma. And they're very screamy and fast and indecipherable, sort of a slightly less impatient Alice In Chains with a very hip low ...

Complex, awe-inspiring, and fresh with fretwork excitement, John Darnielle steps up to the mike with
guitar in hand, revealing sentimental and emotionally charged acoustic gems. Leader of the Mountain Goats, Darnielle doesn't hide any sense of creativity while composing the ...

While Split Enz came first and hit bigger worldwide, one could argue that there would
be no New Zealand rock scene as it is known today if it weren't for the Clean; the sainted Flying Nun label was formed to ...

Merge's 2012 reissue of Copper Blue is greatly expanded to a triple-disc set. The first
of these contains a remastered version of the proper album supported by the B-sides Needle Hits E, a solo acoustic version of If I Can't ...

Dan Bejar, the walking, talking, and singing definition of following your own muse, spent the
last couple of years lugging around a full horn section in support of his slick and soulful 2011 sophisti-pop outing Kaputt, so it should come ...

Gymnastics is the brief but strangely entrancing debut by Washington, D.C.'s Eva Moolchan, who records
under the name Sneaks. This curious little wonder of lo-fi, post-punk minimalism first appeared in 2015, burrowing its way into the hearts of indie fans ...

Key members of the distinctly original collective the Elephant 6 Recording Company, Neutral Milk Hotel
are one of the most riotously exhilarating rock bands of the '90s. They combine the furious fun of punk rock, the lyrical elegance of '60s ...